Well, my 2014 big game season is officially over. In the end, I could not get it done with my 454 during the MN firearms season, and also came up empty handed for the muzzle loader season, effectively ending 2014 for me. I am thankful I took a mule deer in Wyoming for some venni in the freezer!

It definitely was not for lack of effort, as I hunted hard for more days then I ever have. The season was not without its trials, tribulations, frustrations, excitement, and enjoyment... they way hunting should be right! Now as I clean my guns, and start putting away my gear, I am reflecting on the season, and all the things I learned and what I would like to change for next year.

If I hunt the same public land in MN next year, I have more ideas and better understanding of a few more spots to ambush deer. I also want to do some more in depth scouting now that I no longer need to worry about spooking deer.

I also (just like last year) am vowing to practice more this off season, and I have been working on acquiring more bullets and components to make sure I have more ammo to practice with, this summer I felt a little "light" in the ammo department, and factory ammo is too dang expensive. I also want to do more shooting on shooting sticks. Right now I am exploring my options with Bog Pods or making my own tripod or "African" style sticks.

I am looking forward to the 2015 season already, and that is good, because even though my hunting season just ended, I need to start planning for next year. After all, Wyoming non-resident elk application deadline is January 31st!

How was your season?

Sorry you had no love on the whitetail hunting. Good deal on scoring a Muley, though. They are my favorite game to hunt.

My season isn't over yet, but I've managed to score the following this fall:

9 - Hogs
3 - Whitetail (1 Buck / 2 Does)
1 - Axis Buck
1 - Blackbuck Buck

very nice Zee!

Yeah, here in MN, there is some good potential for big bodied and antlered bucks, but it is not a "target rich" environment (atleast not public land in northern MN).

I could have killed several does, but most of the state this year is under a buck only management type to boost the herd numbers. I did pass on a spike, and a fork horn, hoping that these fellas could carry on and get a little bigger. Not that I was holding out for a giant by any stretch, I was just looking for something a little older and bigger bodied than a yearling

You speak as a true hunter,I picked up on that right off the bat, It"s depressing when the season ends,looking back, if you hunted hard and gave it your best shot, you should have no regrets at all, TO NEXT YEAR.

Small game started on Oct. 1, and with a "new" Contender with a .410 barrel, I got into quick action on early season squirrels, filling the bag on a few early season days, which was a ton of fun!

I didn't start hunting deer (didn't even scout) seriously until the last 5 days of archery. In my area, I ended up having a string of little issues during the last week of our archery season that prevented me from killing 2 smallish 8-pointers and a broke-rack 7, the worst of which a nagging joint pain left me unable to draw on that 7. I passed on a bunch of spikes and fork-horns during archery, drew on (but let pass) a very small 6 and 8 during archery, and the only buck I saw once firearms opened was a fork-horn that presented a good shot at 90 yds. on the second day, which I also passed up.

I hunt all of our seasons here, so at the bare minimum, I almost always shoot a few does; my days of shooting small bucks are long past. Ended the season with 1 healthy doe with a 30/30 Contender pistol and 2 similar-sized does for muzzleloader with the B.P. Encore rifle (one, admittedly, was a put-down shot for another hunter that wounded a doe, and most likely would have died days later if I didn't intervene). Freezer is full, jerky is made, and sausage is on the way. Now it's back to late season small-game-pistol-poppin', and maybe varmints, if the motivation strikes me (and the wife will tolerate more furs pinned to the wall

)

No trophies, heck no antlers at all, but a freezer full of happy season memories here with occasionally some good guys, and occasionally some much-needed solitude.

And eagerly looking forward to the next season, implementing the little changes I know I need to make in gear, practice, and set-up that will make it more productive than this one. That's the seasons that we remember.

RedSS, sounds like you had a eventful season,with some good luck, congrat"s

BBwheelgunner, good on ya with the muley. Mule deer is one of my bucket list hunts.

Zee, sounds like you've had an exceptional season. An established wild hog population would be a bad thing for the wildlife in my neck of the woods, but nonetheless, it'd be a cool local hunting option.



It was.

The season for me is winding down. It was a season of many changes in the fact that this past summer my wife and I moved into a new home and my parents did the same within a month of that time. So I wasn't able to devote a huge deal of time scouting and preparing.

This year that is huntable to go after deer. I hunted the whole season for deer and did not see a thing. Later during the muzzleloader season I found out why.

I have been hunting this spot for almost thirty years with the bow and sometimes gun. I was elated at the chance to hunt with a handgun for deer this season but it was more or less for naught. I ran into another hunter who has permission at the same spot. We chatted for a while and I found out some bad news.

He told me that the neighboring orchard shot over a dozen deer. I guess they used crop damage permits so the little deer haven that once was is now decimated. We don't have a lot of deer per square mile. In our area we're probably at 15 or less. With those deer gone no wonder I did not see a thing all season long. In fact my trail cameras indicate that as well. We did have some snow on Thanksgiving and I saw three sets of tracks passing through. For years you could count on seeing deer but no more.

It looks like I will have to make some kind of change for 2015.

I still have until December31st with the muzzleloader but it ain't looking good.

I've seen a grand total of three deer since gun season opened the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I passed on a little buck that afternoon, certain I would see more later on this season. Big mistake. I've got until the first Sunday in January to try to get one.

This one strikes a nerve. In 2006, I got permission to hunt a 100-acre farm across the street from my house that had laid idle for a few years, but almost all of the acreage still had tillable land. My dad had hunted this land in his youth when it was a full-time running farm. The neighboring property was a 300+ acre farm (cattle farm, according to my grandmother) that had laid idle for almost 2 decades, and featured a mix of old growth oak on a ridge, brushy grown-over fields, and a little bottomland swamp. The whole place was an absolute magnet for all sorts of game and was the only place I hunted. For 2 glorious years I hunted that place and saw more heavy racked bucks for a week of hunting effort than I usually now see in 2 whole seasons on the current properties, and could guarantee at least a doe or 2 for some meager effort. I passed numerous bucks that I'd gladly shoot these days. Then in early 2008, a vegetable farmer leased the 100-acre land. He did not like deer eating but a bushel of crop, got a "nuisance permit" to shoot deer (to my understanding, after a conversation with the local EnCon officer, the permit allows a farmer to shoot does from June to September), and promptly got to it. I even called the local EnCon officer after a string of shots one night in late September, thinking it was poachers. He did an investigation and got back to me a few days later, saying that the lesee had gotten the permit and everything checked out. I hunted a handful of full days there in '08 and '09, and the grand total sightings for the effort was one little spike and one doe. Needless to say, I haven't bothered to go back since. I have to drive by the land every night on the way home from work, and it is now rare to see even a doe by the roadway, whereas multiple deer sightings were commonplace.

I don't understand how a farmer can be issued a permit that essentially allows one person to drastically reduce the deer population in a given area, whereas the rest of us have to abide by statutes that purposely make it more difficult to harvest a game animal.

Our group had a fun productive season this year! The 14 year old son of one of the group killed a 150 inch deer during archery season. Another buddy and myself killed a couple of 3 year old does with our hand guns. I was able to take a 116 inch wide ten point with the shotgun and a 124 inch 9 point with the muzzle loader.

Now I hunt one more weekend for deer and maybe coyote once or twice. Then wait for spring turkey season.

I haven't had an opportunity to hunt until now. I am off till January 4 and plan on hunting every day starting in the morning.

good luck to those of you still hunting!

RedSS,
Sounds like a heartbreaking story to me. Sadly, wildlife usually loses when it comes to head to head conflicts with human issues (namely economic). Most of my frustrations this year had to do with hunting public land. In my area, there are people that put up ilegal permanent stands and "lay claim" to entire areas of public land. They always say stuff like "we have been hunting here for 30 years..." I just get really frustrated, and think "well, this has been a national forest since 1908, so there!" haha. Usually after the first week of the season, I almost have the entire 3000ish acres to myself, so we will see how it goes next year, but I may be browsing for a new spot.

How true. It is quite a sorry state of affairs.

I'm always on the lookout for a new private-land parcel to hunt. There's lots of undeveloped land held by private interests in my local area, but the viewpoint from the owners regarding hunting generally ranges from indifference to outright hostility, so it's not always easy to secure a legal place to hunt.

My son and I plan to hunt one last time in the morning and then get home for college football. It has been a slower season for us in a lot of ways even tho I have killed four deer and he has killed two.. Big bucks have been hard to come by this year.

Over here in OR too, just put in for a spring bear hunt about 7hrs east of home. I shot a spike buck with my iron sighted Super Blackhawk, made a nice double lung shot with 240gr XTP's and he ran about 10yds. Used to be that with a disabled permit you could shoot does so I normally try to find big barren does but ODFW in all their wisdom stopped that but didn't stop issuing doe tags on the draw hunts or for muzzle loader hunts. Anyways I passed on three cow elk because they were with small groups and I was trying to get my wife her first elk and in this thick stuff by the time we could confirm whether or not any of them had horns the animal i was sighted in on had gotten impatient and left. Sucks for the freezer but I really was hoping my wife would kill her first elk. There is always next year if the Lord is willing. I did just survive my ninth back surgery so hopefully that is a good omen. I can't seem to quit breaking the titanimum hardware and blowing disc, 5 at one time this time around.

I had two deer walk within 25 yards of the blind I was in yesterday morning but it was a few minutes before legal shooting time and I had to pass.

After legal shooting light a big doe tried to cross the field out of range of my ruger Blackhawk and I elected to take her with my 30-06 that I have had since 1981. She ran into the woods.

A few minutes later a doe came out of the woods where the other one had ran. She was limping badly and I though that I must have made a bad shot on the first deer so I shot her and she fell right there.

When I went to recover the deer in the field I checked to see if she had been shoot twice and she had not. That was when I realized that I had shot two different does. I found the other one just twenty yards into the woods. I do not know why the second doe was limping.

I had two tags left so everything was legal. I tagged and called the two deer in before I called my son, who was hunting some land fifteen minutes away, unloaded my guns since I was out of tags and took a nap in the sun until my son got there. This is the latest I have shot a deer in 35 years.

My season is over now. I plan to get a trigger job done on my Blackhawk soon and get back to practicing for next year.

I hunt all our seasons and took six deer this year with five different weapons including my GP 100 but plan to take all my does next year with either my bow or one of my pistols. I got a CVA OPTIMA V2 muzzle loading pistol for Christmas and want to hunt our muzzle loading season with it.

Good luck to those of you who still have some hunting season left and Happy New Year!